Mapping the digital divide presently existing between urban and rural India has been bothering the Indian government for the last few years as setting infrastructure in remote areas remains a mammoth challenge. It is no secret that communication infrastructure also assumes an important place in overall infrastructure development especially in the modern-day world where communication channels play an important role in economic development. And while urban India gradually though slowly gets connected on the broadband ecosystem, rural India ironically is still deprived of information and communication channels which can be offered over broadband. Mobile Broadband can precisely serve the purpose in a big way feels the GSMA.

“A recent World Bank study pinpoints that for every 10% increase in broadband penetration, a nation’s economy increases by 1%. Imagine an added growth of 1% to India’s economy which stands at a growth rate of 7.9% as per the latest quarterly figures released,” says Jaikishan Rajaraman, Senior Director, GSMA in an interaction with TelecomTiger.

Jaikishan’s reasoning is that laying out network for a fixedline broadband connectivity will not be feasible in the Indian context especially in rural areas. “The cost of laying a broadband network over the mobile medium is almost one-tenth the cost of laying a fixedline broadband network,” claims Jaikishan.

He says that WiMax will play only a niche and complementary role in delivering wireless broadband as global trends show that WiMAX can never be a mass market mobile broadband technology. He cites multiple reasons working against WiMAX such as lack of ecosystem, cost of infrastructure considering the lack of backhaul network for the technology, limited range of devices supporting the technology.

The GSMA Senior Director however admits that as an industry body, GSMA would have liked the Indian government start planning for more spectrum in the future than the currently committed spectrum in blocks of 5 MHz each. According to Jaikishan, it is a known fact that some quantum of this spectrum will be used by incumbents to support 2G services as well where they are facing spectrum crunch. Hence it will eventually restrict the availability of 3G spectrum for use.

“India needs to make use of the digital dividend opportunity offered by the 700 MHz to gear up for future roadmap for spectrum availability as the band promises to make broadband a much more feasible option,” says Jaikishan.

“A study completed by LECG shows that an investment of $ 20 billion made in 3G networks over the next five years will benefit the Indian economy by more than  $ 70 billion with additional creation of up to 14 million jobs,” concludes Jaikishan in an effort to highlight the potential which India has been missing due to the delay in entry of 3G services.